Ford, Amazon, Subway are top buzziest US brands, survey shows

Video: BrandIndex, a company that ranks brand perception among consumers, has released their list of the American brands with the best reputations. Donny Deutsch, chairman of Deutsch Inc., discusses the rankings.

Ford, Amazon, Subway and the History Channel are the “buzziest” brands in the United States, according to the latest bi-annual list from YouGov's BrandIndex.

The U.S. survey is based on interviews with 20,000 people each week and measures a brand’s buzz, which includes whether people have heard anything positive or negative about the brand in the media or through word of mouth. The company issues a new list every six months.

Buzziest American brands:

1) Ford

2) Amazon

3) Subway

4) History Channel

5) Lowe’s

6) V8

7) Walgreens

8) YouTube

9) Kindle

10) Cheerios

Some of the names are notable in that they can be classified as self-empowerment brands, advertising executive Donny Deutsch said on the TODAY show. “The consumer has control,” when it comes to Kindle, Subway and You Tube, he said. “This is a lot of the trend that is going on.”

The mid-year BrandIndex survey also compiles a list of brands with the most-improved buzz from six months ago. This time around, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and JPMorgan win the awards for making the best rebound. In part, that boost can be tied to the improved economy, according to the survey researchers.

Most-improved buzz

1) Goldman Sachs

2) Bank of America

3) JPMorgan

4) American Airlines

5) BlackBerry

6) Galaxy

7) Morgan Stanley

8) Kodak

9) Bing

10) Starbucks DoubleShot Energy+Coffee

BrandIndex also conducts its surveys internatinally, examining thousands of brands on a daily basis. “Globally, Samsung is the winner,” the company states in its mid-year report. “Samsung is the strongest international performer for the second year running – the technology brand appears in the Top 10 lists for eleven out of fourteen countries monitored.”